The pedals are amazing, all metal construction aside from a bit of black plastic along the base. My scale showed them at 10 lbs.

Looking at the back of the pedals

The brake pedal has a load cell that you can adjust to set the stiffness of the pedal

I got the shifter set as well, it comes with a 6 position gate shifter plus reverse and a sequential shifter that just moves either forward or back. The silver parts are aluminum and the base is plastic, the movement of the shifter feels pretty good but I won't know for sure until I can mount them up and try them in game.

I did build a wheel stand based on a post I found on the interwebs and took a few pictures tonight but the lighting was pretty bad, hope you get the idea on what it is

Sadly my wheel won't be here for a month or two so all goes back into the box until the CSR elite wheel ships. I have to admit after seeing this stuff that I'm tempted to just cave and get the CSR wheel that is available now but for now I hold strong and will wait.

If anything the challenge mode should force you to play the same settings

you're smoking some crack there Ken, I had no assists on except the braking line. look again. ABS off, Stabilization off, Manual trans w/ clutch, simulation steering, professional oppoenents, etc. Everything was at max with no assists. I also ran a clean lap, only one of the list to do it so far

So I spent a good 40 minutes trying to beat you last night. I matched all the settings that you had (I'll admit I wasn't reading things correctly the first time) I've gotten times down to 1:27 but it never says I've beat your score. It keeps me at 2nd place. When I look at our settings, I have a triangle on the last row, and I can't figure out what it means. I even took off the braking line and beat you but it doesn't register.

If anything the challenge mode should force you to play the same settings

you're smoking some crack there Ken, I had no assists on except the braking line. look again. ABS off, Stabilization off, Manual trans w/ clutch, simulation steering, professional oppoenents, etc. Everything was at max with no assists. I also ran a clean lap, only one of the list to do it so far

So I spent a good 40 minutes trying to beat you last night. I matched all the settings that you had (I'll admit I wasn't reading things correctly the first time) I've gotten times down to 1:27 but it never says I've beat your score. It keeps me at 2nd place. When I look at our settings, I have a triangle on the last row, and I can't figure out what it means. I even took off the braking line and beat you but it doesn't register.

So, screw it. I may not be able to prove it, but in my mind I did

it means you didn't have a clean lap. A clean lap will always be better than an unclean one, even if slower. You can't hit other cars or go off the track and have it count, that's cheatin!

If anything the challenge mode should force you to play the same settings

you're smoking some crack there Ken, I had no assists on except the braking line. look again. ABS off, Stabilization off, Manual trans w/ clutch, simulation steering, professional oppoenents, etc. Everything was at max with no assists. I also ran a clean lap, only one of the list to do it so far

So I spent a good 40 minutes trying to beat you last night. I matched all the settings that you had (I'll admit I wasn't reading things correctly the first time) I've gotten times down to 1:27 but it never says I've beat your score. It keeps me at 2nd place. When I look at our settings, I have a triangle on the last row, and I can't figure out what it means. I even took off the braking line and beat you but it doesn't register.

So, screw it. I may not be able to prove it, but in my mind I did

it means you didn't have a clean lap. A clean lap will always be better than an unclean one, even if slower. You can't hit other cars or go off the track and have it count, that's cheatin!

A wheel makes the game so so much more fun. A lot of people don't realize how much true force feedback adds in comparison to simple controller rumble. You get a much better sense of how your car is moving or slipping or whatever, you can naturally let it straighten out after turns the same way you would in a real car, and of course it's more fun when things go wrong and you go into the dirt or hit a car/wall.

A wheel makes the game so so much more fun. A lot of people don't realize how much true force feedback adds in comparison to simple controller rumble. You get a much better sense of how your car is moving or slipping or whatever, you can naturally let it straighten out after turns the same way you would in a real car, and of course it's more fun when things go wrong and you go into the dirt or hit a car/wall.

Going to the opposite extreme, anyone have thoughts on that new air wheel thing that MS just released?

I can hide that thing easier!

I picked that up, but I'm not very impressed. No shoulder buttons, so you have to compromise on what function you will assign to what button. And the Forza 4 demo, which didn't allow customization, assigned the shift functions to D-pad up and down, which was weird, instead of using the X and B buttons. No rumble function either. Also it uses AA batteries, not the usual 360 controller battery pack, and the instructions say that rechargeable batteries are discouraged. Finally the trigger buttons are just that, curved triggers. With my big hands it makes it awkward to try to use my thumbs on the D-pad and ABXY while maintaining a good grip on the triggers. And while for younger folks with smaller hands it might be ok to twist the whole unit ninety degrees left and right while manipulating the triggers, it caused me pain in my carpal tunnel area after a while. For me, I'm much happier with the standard controller.

Going to the opposite extreme, anyone have thoughts on that new air wheel thing that MS just released?

I can hide that thing easier!

I picked that up, but I'm not very impressed. No shoulder buttons, so you have to compromise on what function you will assign to what button. And the Forza 4 demo, which didn't allow customization, assigned the shift functions to D-pad up and down, which was weird, instead of using the X and B buttons. No rumble function either. Also it uses AA batteries, not the usual 360 controller battery pack, and the instructions say that rechargeable batteries are discouraged. Finally the trigger buttons are just that, curved triggers. With my big hands it makes it awkward to try to use my thumbs on the D-pad and ABXY while maintaining a good grip on the triggers. And while for younger folks with smaller hands it might be ok to twist the whole unit ninety degrees left and right while manipulating the triggers, it caused me pain in my carpal tunnel area after a while. For me, I'm much happier with the standard controller.

I have gone for this wheel, I have a really good wheel for GT5 but as usual PS3 wheels don't work on the 360.

The main reason is my 4 year old son can't use a stick controller or wheel and pedals but can thanks to the motion controls (and Wii) use the motion wheel. It should be perfect for him as all he will need is accelerate and break which I assume are the 2 trigger buttons. AT present he does that and I do steering with the stick and he is getting old enough to want to do it himself.

I also won't use manual gears so I hope it works for me as the wife isn't keen on the wheel in the lounge set up at all.

jzt2 - Thanks for the heads up, but was at and my 5 and 6 year olds were flying around and having a blast using the wireless thing, so like Reemul, I might have to go this route...for the children!

I didn't think it was that bad either, but I'm not really good anyway.

No problem. Racing is a young person's game anyway

Speaking of Forza 4, I see in the track lists here and here that the New York track is gone. Shame, it was a hoot to watch the AI drivers crash into themselves in the chicanes. It also appears we have lost the Bugatti circuit (that's the short one) at LeMans. Seems weird that they would keep the track but drop one of the options. Also Amalfi is gone. Bummer. I guess I'll be holding onto my copy of Forza 3, but then I've still got my Forza 2 and my original Forza as well.

I ordered the LCE off of Amazon. I was slightly annoyed that it was showing a delivery date of the 14th instead of release date shipping, but it was stuck on "Shipping Soon" for a while and suddenly it's listed as out on the truck. Go figure.

Sucks for the Best Buy pre-order folks. It seems like almost all of the brick-and-mortar game retailers are getting scummier and scummier.

I am a bit disappointed that I deleted my save game to start over and so I won't be getting any imports, not the end of the world but still a shame.

Luckily I've kept mine as I'm still occasionally playing Forza 3. It's weird that it wasn't till four days ago that I even saw a mention about rolling over the old game data. I have seen since then that you will get some amount of credits depending on the credits you had in FM3, and FM4 will bring over your created vinyls and (maybe) your designs. I'm not sure on the latter, it was a bit vague.

I'm off in a few minutes to Gamestop to pick up my copy, hopefully it will be there

I am a bit disappointed that I deleted my save game to start over and so I won't be getting any imports, not the end of the world but still a shame.

Luckily I've kept mine as I'm still occasionally playing Forza 3. It's weird that it wasn't till four days ago that I even saw a mention about rolling over the old game data. I have seen since then that you will get some amount of credits depending on the credits you had in FM3, and FM4 will bring over your created vinyls and (maybe) your designs. I'm not sure on the latter, it was a bit vague.

I'm off in a few minutes to Gamestop to pick up my copy, hopefully it will be there

Really? That's awesome, wasn't even expecting to get the vinyls and designs, or any credits. I was just thrilled that my level 50 profile results in having a pretty good starting stable of cars - to be honest, I'll probably not even use them all right away, as I think that the starting stable with an imported profile might be a little -too- good. My favorite part of these games is when you're scrambling for cash and early cars anyway.

I ordered the LCE off of Amazon. I was slightly annoyed that it was showing a delivery date of the 14th instead of release date shipping, but it was stuck on "Shipping Soon" for a while and suddenly it's listed as out on the truck. Go figure.

Yeah, mine is scheduled to arrive tomorrow, which sucks. So much for my free release day shipping with Prime.

For my six million credits in FM3 I got gifted sixty thousand in FM4, so it's not a big deal. I did get about seven million credits worth of gifted cars because I owned them in FM3, and because I was an FM3 VIP, I also got three other cars. And I haven't even entered all my codes yet. I was also able to transfer all my vinyls from FM3, including ones I had gotten through other folks storefront. And right now I'm downloading a BMW M5 available for free from the Turn 10 access area in game. I'm not sure how I got there, but I'll post once I figure it out.

UPDATE: It's under Marketplace, on the far right of the vertical selection bars.